As reported at
Boing Boing:
Third generation Texas judge Elizabeth E. Coker has resigned just ahead
of being investigated for misconduct; she admits that she texted
instructions to prosecutors in order to help them convict the defendants
whose cases she heard. She also is accused of other indiscretions,
including meeting with jurors and attempting to influence them to
convict defendants. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct suggests
that she lied to them as well, perjuring herself. She's out of a job,
but apparently will face no criminal or civil sanctions for her crimes;
nor will the victims whose trials she perverted be freed.
Also
no mention of indictments or penalties for the prosecuting attorneys who received her texts and failed to report the activity. Perhaps some reader here can clarify - is this not a criminal act? Or just not a crime in Texas? Is it merely a moral/ethical lapse appropriately treated by reprimand and job loss?
More details at the Boing Boing link and at the Montgomery County Police Reporter.
Refer to my Hans Hoppe quote a couple dozen posts back, about privileged functions and functional privileges. Of course the political class takes little or no personal risk in such privileged functions, and of course there will be no legal jeopardy; the worst they can expect is an unwanted job loss.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have built with democracy is an injustice system, without indemnity, that heaps bad upon bad and calls it justice.
I agree so much that every time I was sent a jury questionnaire I wrote on it that I distrust the system so much that if put on a jury I will never vote for a conviction. And I mean it. I don't trust the evidence collection and processing. I don't trust that a statement made in custody is true and not coerced. I don't trust that the prosecution hasn't manufactured or planted evidence, or hidden exculpatory evidence. I cringe at the prospect of being out of the blue charged with a crime I had nothing to do with and having evidence planted to convict me. I don't trust police one millimeter. I lived in Illinois during the period when 13 out of the 26 men on death row were found by DNA evidence to be 100% innocent. All 13 of them would be murdered by the state by now if it wasn't for the DNA Project. It is a system built for the convenience of the lawyers, the DAs, the police, and the judges, and that treats people like cattle and as if they are guilty until they spend enough money on lawyers to buy their way out of jail.
DeleteSounds like business as usual in the legal area in Texas. This is based on my family's own personal experience of how a defendant who plays golf with the judge who hears his case overturns a unanimous verdict against the defendant in exchange for golf pro lessons. It get the sense that corruption and incompetence are more the norm that the exception there.
ReplyDeleteIf the allegations are true, then she belongs in prison. Sadly, she will never be sent there.
ReplyDeleteIt's Texas... fuck Texas and their ignorant "frontier" mentality...
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone here think that she invented that game? She obviously had seen it happen before and thought, "Well, everybody else is doing it, so why not me, too - if I want to get ahead in the system?"
DeleteI WILL NEVER LIVE IN TEXAS. Specifically because of their court system.